


Nurse Me

by selahexanimo



Category: The Legend of Zelda
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:43:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selahexanimo/pseuds/selahexanimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malon is clumsy, and Link proves a rather skilled doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nurse Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on tumblr: leave a “Nurse Me” in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about one character healing another.

Exhaustion makes Malon clumsy. She wakes up, partially, when she burns her hand tending the stove, but true alertness does not return quickly enough to prevent her from walking into a door a few moments later.

The door takes her by surprise; she collides with its hard edge. For a handful of heartbeats, she clutches her face and heaves up great, dry sobs - more a protest against the cruelty of the universe than an expression of pain. But having finally indulged herself, she drops her hand and gets down to business.  
  
Link finds her seated beside the fire, softening a pat of butter to slather on her burn. He kneels beside her and squints at her wounds.  
  
“What’ve you been doing?” he asks, sounding vaguely amused, though his expression is sympathetic.  
  
“How should I know?” Malon groans. She gingerly prods at her gashed cheek, winces when she finds it sticky. She lowers her hand and finds blood on her finger. “Oh as the goddesses are good,” she wails. “What was I doing?”  
  
Link kindly does not comment. He rises and vanishes into the gloom of the house; when he returns, he joins Malon on the floor and arrays bandages, soap, clean cloths, and two bowls of cool water before her with all the authority of a surgeon. He eases her burned hand into one bowl. It is only when he is soaping a cloth to apply to her face that she notices the butter she meant for her burn is gone.  
  
She asks after it. Link shudders.  
  
“Butter’s no good for burns,” he says. “Please trust me when I say this.”  
  
Despite the pain, she manages a little grunt of surprise. “You’ve tried it?” she says.  
  
Link shudders again. “Aye, on the advice of a quack barber. I was young.”  
  
“But Papa says a barber told him butter’s good for burns.”  
  
Link’s expression slides toward the unbecomingly sarcastic. “It must have been the same barber, then. Tilt your head back.”  
  
Malon is about to argue - the men whose advice her papa takes are good at their work, and none of them are quacks - but then Link slides a hand behind her neck, and her thoughts, her body, go soft and loose beneath his touch. His hands are cool, slippery with soap, gentle and sure. He leans toward her, and she breathes in the familiar scent of him - sweat, soap, sword oil. She loves him to be so close to her - she does not think she could ever get enough of him.  
  
He daubs the cut beneath her eye, and the sting of it interrupts her thoughts. She flinches.  
  
“Close your eyes,” Link says. He touches her uninjured cheek, as if to punctuate his request, and the tension melts from her. She shuts her eyes - and because she cannot help herself, she smiles.  
  
“How did you become so good at doctoring?” she asks, when he finishes with her face and turns his attention to her burn.  
  
“Doctoring’s something a traveling man needs to know,” Link replies, as he pats her hand dry with a cloth. “As much as how to cook and how to avoid quack barbers.”  
  
She laughs. “Well! With your skills, you could become a quack barber yourself and make a fortune.”  
  
“Maybe.” He begins to dress her burn. “But I—”  
  
He pauses, and his hands falter. She says, “Link?” and he drops his eyes, makes little, nervous gestures.  
  
“I was just going to say,” he mumbles, “I’ve no need to make a fortune, now.”  
  
She squints at him. “You’ve a fortune, then?” she says, laughing. “Buried rupees all tucked away beneath a rock, like a Picori horde?”  
  
He falters again. Though she can hardly see him, she can tell from the way he moves that he is blushing.  
  
“No,” he says. “Not rupees and not tucked away.”  
  
He looks at her. She looks at him. “You mustn’t keep me in suspense,” she says, with a sly smile, though she thinks he knows what he means.  
  
He wavers a little more, and she wonders how he can be so sure one moment and so shy the next. She loves that he can.  
  
And she loves, even more, how he abruptly leans forward and kisses her.  
  
It is a quick kiss, no more than a peck, but it sweeps away the ache of her injuries and leaves a momentary frisson of pleasure in their place. She laughs, and Link starts to gather the medical supplies together with fumbling hands. She touches his shoulder.  
  
“Am I your fortune?” she says. “Kiss me again if I am.”  
  
He kisses her again. And Malon thinks that she has never been more awake than she is now.


End file.
